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September Entry: The Broken Coast

Well, I wanted to go in a totally different direction, but rebounded when what I was trying to do totally hosed up. More than likely, RobA will enter with the idea I could not get from my brain into the computer, but I will leave it up you everyone to speculate as to what the hell I was trying to get done.

I like the colors of the land and the water... But the bevel around the coast is jamming me up for some reason.. can't quite put my finger on it, but it looks wrong somehow... Try a pillow bevel maybe? ..

hey... something looks eerily familiar about the shape of this map... hmmm

I peeked earlier, but...

I peeked at your map, earlier yesterday, but I was waiting for you to place one or more of the terrain features - forests, mountains, etc., before I would comment. Not enough here for me to say much, yet.

You do have the coastlines looking proper. You're colors seemed more like placeholders or rough backgrounds at least, until you started placing terrain features - yet the colors are appropriate.

I really need to see more, to make any kind of real response. Looks like a good start.

I had to start over on this challenge. I ended up noticing a border about 8 px that I did not like and it was pretty much on all the layers. Soo.. here is take to.. It's only a tiny bit more advanced than the previous one. Note that the

Water
Rivers
Marsh

are meant to be as they are(within reason based on comments).

The Ground colors and the "Mountains" are there as temporary place holders. Of primary concern is any comments on the marsh itself as that is what I have been spending the entire night trying to figure out how to get right. Since marshes are supposed to be shallow and possibly transitory depending on the time of the year, I actually put the light blue shallow underneath the land mass and used a stipple type brush to erase out parts of the actual land mass to let the underlying water show through in some places.

wow... that is quite cool.... those swamps look fantastic... The only thing I can think to comment on improving the swamps is maybe a bit darker on hue... but i'm partially colorblind and it might look fine to everyone else...

wow... that is quite cool.... those swamps look fantastic... The only thing I can think to comment on improving the swamps is maybe a bit darker on hue... but i'm partially colorblind and it might look fine to everyone else...

I like it so far, the swamp to me almost looks like a giant-honeycomb/wasp nest in spots. Are they home to some insectoid empire maybe?

Umm could be! The idea was kind of the type of reedy marsh you see along the coast before you hit the actual beaches. Many times you see such things abutting the sound on the mainland side before crossing a bridge to an ajoining island. I actually went and looked up the different between swamp and marsh to get a feel. My first try was really dark and after I did some googling, I ended up thinking more along the lines of light = marsh, dark = swamp as swamps "can" be deeper. The idea here is that the water is only a few feet deep in most places, and even those places that appear to be solid land with reeds and such are more than likely clumps of vegetation that are not stable. Things in water that are not compacted tend to disintigrate rather quickly so to speak. I may also do a few more things to let some of the water "pools" be more visible from underneath, perhaps I will select them and cut them out of the marsh vegitaitons and texture layers to make it a bit more obvious and let the underlying water show through really well. just have to be careful when I go to do my shore bevel so that I don't have them selected as I dont WANT them to be distinct borders.

Anyway, thanks for the comments guys... Any more are appreciated. I hope to work on the Hills and Mountains sometime tonight, though I am not sure if I will get to a point where I can post up.

Holy Cow! My Daughter went to bed early tonight! That means I can spend time and check out/comment on other works of art up here! YAY!

OK,

- I love the texture of the ocean but I think there is far too much glow around the islands. I say glow because it looks like they are glowing instead of it being a shore or sandbar. It just doesn't look natural to me.
- I like the detail of your swamp - it is very crisp and clear. I think it could use some hue adjustments along with lowering the saturation a bit. I think it is a bit too colorful to be a dangerous swamp. I think it could us a bit more dirtying up but perhaps you haven't gotten to that phase yet.
- The mountains are a nice texture but I have a secret hope that you increase the height in different parts of it - just to see how well you do it now that I struggled with my mountains for way too many hours.
- It is coming along nicely for the initial phase! Great work!